Bitcoin (BTC) price prediction: Stretched from $300,000 to $1.5 million

Original article: David Puell, Analyst at Ark Invest;

At the beginning of the year, Ark Invest, a Bitcoin "die-hard bull" and Cathie Wood, released the Big Ideas 2025 report, which mentioned three price targets that Bitcoin is expected to achieve by 2030: $300,000 (bear market), $710,000 (benchmark market) and $1.5 million (bull market). At that time, it just "simply shouted" a price far beyond market expectations (as crazy as Plan B), and did not disclose the actual estimation process.

Two months later, Ark Invest finally announced its modeling method and logical assumptions for Bitcoin's 2030 price target. The model predicts Bitcoin's price in 2023 through Bitcoin's total potential market size (TAM) and penetration rate (popularity or share).

Even more encouraging (exaggerated) is the calculation based on Bitcoin's active supply indicator created by Ark Invest, where the price of Bitcoin in 2030 is: $500,000 (bear market), $1.2 million (base market) and $2.4 million (bull market). If any of the TAM or penetration rates do not meet expectations, Bitcoin may not reach these price targets. So there are also some risks and deviations in this model.

The following are the specific details of the Bitcoin price prediction, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily.

Price Targets and Assumptions

Our price target is the sum of the TAM (Total Addressable Market) contributions at the end of 2030, based on the following formula:

Odaily Planet Daily Note: This formula predicts the price of Bitcoin in 2030 by quantifying the dynamic relationship between market demand and Bitcoin circulation. The Bitcoin price is obtained by multiplying the maximum dollar base demand size of the market segment by the penetration rate of Bitcoin in its market and dividing it by the circulating supply of Bitcoin, and the price of Bitcoin in 2030 is predicted by summing the prices of all market segments (the following market segments/concepts).

Our supply estimate is based on the circulating supply of Bitcoin, which is close to 20.5 million BTC mined by 2030. The contribution of each variable to the price target is as follows:

Contributors to estimated capital accumulation (mainly):

1. Institutional investment, mainly through spot ETFs;

2. Bitcoin is called "digital gold" by some people. Compared with gold, it is a more flexible and transparent means of storing value;

3. Emerging market investors seek safe havens that can protect them from inflation and currency depreciation.

Contributors to estimated capital accumulation (minor):

4. National treasury reserves. Other countries follow the example of the United States and establish strategic reserves of Bitcoin;

5. Corporate treasury reserves, as more and more companies use Bitcoin to diversify their fiat cash;

6. Financial services on the Bitcoin chain, Bitcoin as an alternative to traditional finance.

Excluding digital gold (which is excluded from our model as it is Bitcoin's most direct zero-sum competitor), we conservatively assume that the TAM of the above contributors (specifically 1, 3, 4, and 5) will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3% over the next six years. For the sixth contributor, Bitcoin's on-chain financial services, we assume a 6-year CAGR of between 20% and 60%, based on the cumulative value as of the end of 2024, as follows:

Odaily Planet Daily Note: This formula calculates Bitcoin TAM six years from now by the total value of Bitcoin in 2024 and the compound annual growth rate, and divides it by the circulating supply of Bitcoin in 2030 to calculate its price.

Finally, we describe the contribution of TAM and penetration to the bear, baseline, and bull price targets, respectively, as follows:

As shown above, “digital gold” contributes the most to our bear and base cases, while institutional investment contributes the most to our bull case. Interestingly, national treasuries, corporate treasuries, and Bitcoin on-chain financial services contribute relatively little in each scenario. In the table below, we detail the relative contributions of our six predicted sources of capital accumulation to the bear, base case, and bull case scenarios:

Odaily Planet Daily Note: The following charts are the expected TAM of the market segments in 2030, the Bitcoin penetration rate under three market conditions, and the contribution ratio in the above chart.

1. Potential contributors to capital accumulation: institutional investment

According to State Street, the global market portfolio is defined as follows:

The market value of all investable capital assets divided by the